Poulsbo update: cleaner, faster, stronger, video playback acceleration

Source

I've updated the Poulsbo packages a bit over the last two days. Thanks to a suggestion from lkundrak the libdrm-poulsbo package is a lot cleaner now - it installs entirely to a subdirectory so it can co-exist happily with the main Fedora libdrm packages. I cleaned up a few other rough edges, but I made a major addition today. The repo now features libva and a build of mplayer with VAAPI support. What does that mean? Accelerated video playback on your Poulsbo, that's what it means! Ensure you have the repo enabled, do 'yum install mplayer-vaapi' (and if you already installed in the last two days, also update xpsb-glx), then try it: mplayer-vaapi -vo vaapi -va vaapi somevideofile.avi it can only play back the types of file it actually has acceleration support for - DivX / XviD, MPEG-2, H.264, WMV and a few others (see upstream for details) - if you try a video with a different codec it won't fall back to non-accelerated playback, it'll just fail. And it seems a bit patchy even on some files it supports. But when it works, it's awesome - it can play back 720p H264 on my Vaio P with only a smidgeon of frame dropping (compared to non-accelerated playback, which drops half the frames playing a 640x480 XviD). I'm informed that the codec pack you can buy from Fluendo includes a gstreamer codec for VAAPI acceleration, which would allow any Gstreamer-based player to do accelerated playback. This isn't publicised in its description, though, and I'm not willing to shell out 30 Euros to find out. If someone else out there is, though, feel free. There's also a special version of RealPlayer with VAAPI support, but it's only available to OEMs, as far as I can tell. Kudos to Gwenole Beauchesne, also ex-of Mandriva, who now works for Splitted Desktop Systems, who did the work to improve libva and patch mplayer to add support.

Comments

samusishere wrote on 2009-08-13 01:27:
ok i get the same thing with this. yum install mplayer-vaapi Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto, refresh-packagekit Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * epel: ftp.linux.ncsu.edu * fedora: ftp.linux.ncsu.edu * rpmfusion-free: lordmorgul.net * rpmfusion-free-updates: lordmorgul.net * rpmfusion-nonfree: lordmorgul.net * rpmfusion-nonfree-updates: lordmorgul.net * updates: ftp.linux.ncsu.edu Setting up Install Process No package mplayer-vaapi available. Nothing to do how do i fix that
adamw wrote on 2009-08-13 02:26:
You still haven't got the repository package installed properly, so you still don't have the correct repository ('poulsbo', it would be called, in that list) available.
samusishere wrote on 2009-08-13 02:48:
so if im fineally understanding correctly then all i need to figure out is how to edit xorg.conf and it should work and i will be able to update it........ and btw just to know im opening the rite thing..... this is all done in the termanel right? becouse i think i found the comand to edit the xorg.conf file but im not sure as it brings up the text editor... is that what should be comeing up?
thorsten wrote on 2009-08-13 06:38:
Thx, for the psb driver. Unfortunately, I got an kernel oops after installing the package: http://www.kerneloops.org/raw.php?rawid=627506&msgid= And after calling yum install xorg-x11-drv-psb, the kernel-devel package was still missing.
adamw wrote on 2009-08-13 07:38:
thorsten: I always get that oops on booting, but it doesn't appear to affect the actual functioning of the system. The kernel-devel dependency should be satisfied via akmods, I don't have any control over that chain...
samusishere wrote on 2009-08-13 18:18:
um i was able to get the package installed via nano..... however once i rebooted x would not start and all i got was a black screen with a blinking line. i had to reinstalll...... would u know what may have caused x to fail at start and if it happens again what can i do
JGendreau wrote on 2009-08-14 02:51:
Hey Adamw, Great job, I followed your instructions to the t and all works great. only issue I'm having is freezing randomly. Acer Aspire one 751h Fedora 11 . I'm not sure what is causing the system to lock up, Random Web pages and programs. and when I say locked up No programs function. I still see the curser moving but I can't shut down access tabs out programs. I have to cold boot the system to regain control. Any guess on the cause? I did install the original version from the 11th
adamw wrote on 2009-08-14 05:51:
I've seen that occasionally. I _suspect_ it may have something to do with heat, but our systems are different, after all. There are discussions about similar issues in the Ubuntu forum thread, and some suggestion that disabling DRI in xorg.conf might help (though that would presumably break 3D acceleration). I haven't tested that myself yet.
Orkestra wrote on 2009-08-15 05:46:
Hello! I'm new in the fedora community and i have the same problem as samusishere (the black screen with a blinking line). Is your last answer (august 13 at 9:51 pm) for samusishere or Jgendreau? Or for the both of them? I would prefer that i haven't to reinstall fedora again :/ However, thanks a lot for your work :) (and sorry if there some mistakes in my english)
adamw wrote on 2009-08-15 06:02:
samusishere seems rather confused so I'm really not sure what's going on there. Are you sure you actually got the driver successfully installed? If you try and run X with the modified xorg.conf but without the driver actually being there, a black screen with a blinking line sounds a lot like what you'd get. ctrl-alt-f2 should get you a text console, you could log in there and look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. It should tell you what's wrong.
Orkestra wrote on 2009-08-15 13:30:
what i've done : -enabled rpm fusion repository. -as root: rpm -Uvh http://adamwill.fedorapeople.org/poulsbo/i586/poulsbo-repository-release-11-1.noarch.rpm yum install xorg-x11-drv-psb. The install seems to be correctly done. -I've check that the kernel-devel is i586. -I've reboot and everything was alright. -I copy/paste your xorg.conf in /etc/X11 and when i reboot: black screen with blinking line... I'm on an Acer Aspire One 751h. Maybe the problem is just that the screen resolution asked in the xorg.conf was too high? I'll retry. If the problem persist i'll try ctrl+alt+f2 and look /var/log/Xorg.0.log
joebie wrote on 2009-08-16 19:25:
First of all thank you! It almost worked like a charm, I found that without the "time" package akmod will fail to compile the psb module. I will try kde soon I will let you know how it goes. Ps. My netbook is an ASUS EEEPC 1101HA and sound doesn't work but wlan0 and eth0 both work fine. Sound did work on ubuntu 9.10 karmic koala but no network there.
iczer1 wrote on 2009-08-17 02:27:
Hi Orkestra, I had the same problem when I first restarted fedora after installing the driver. It is due to the fact that you need a mem=1900MB or whatever in the kernel options. Early posts of poulsbo indicated this. BR, Felix.
dragonmule wrote on 2009-08-17 03:15:
About the Fluendo and Gstreamer. Here are codecs I have of theirs which came loaded OEM. gst-inspect-0.10 |grep flu flump3dec: flump3dec: Fluendo MP3 Decoder (IPP build) flumpeg2vdec: flumpeg2vdec: Fluendo MPEG-2 Video Decoder fluvadec: fluvadec: Fluendo Hardware Accelerated Video Decoder fluwmvdec: fluwmvdec: Fluendo WMV Decoder flumms: flummssrc: Fluendo MMS source flurtp: flurtpasfdepay: RTP packet parser fluwma: fluwmsdec: Fluendo WMS Decoder fluwma: fluwmadec: Fluendo WMA Decoder (STD + PRO Stereo + LSL + WMS) fluasf: fluasfcmdparse: Fluendo ASF Command Parser fluasf: fluasfdemux: Fluendo ASF Demuxer flumcaacdec: flumcaacdec: Fluendo AAC Decoder flumpeg4vdec: flumpeg4vdec: Fluendo MPEG-4 ASP Video Decoder flumpegdemux: flutsdemux: MPEG Transport stream demuxer flumpegdemux: flupsdemux: MPEG Program Demuxer 720p and 1080p h264 hardware accelerated with gstreamer and these codecs plays back very clean. This surprised me as I remembered gstreamer as slow from past experience. Gstreamer still seems to not work as well as mplayer for non-HD videos.